Why does a clock tick tock

Why Does a Clock need to Tick-Tock On occasion, I will have a customer stop that wants a clock that does not tick or hum or make any noise at all. That said, why does a clock tick-tock? The simplest answer is the sound of the tick tock, in regards to a mechanical movement, is the escapement arresting and releasing allowing the gearing on the time going train of the clock to proceed at a given speed to allow for correct time keeping.

In a quartz clock the tick one hears is essentially the same idea, except in a quartz movement there is a quartz crystal that is excited with an electric coil that releases its energy every second so that the time going train can advance as required for correct time keeping.

On many electric clocks the time is kept with a synchronous motor that reacts to the volt, 60 hertz cycles that is typical with the electric supplied to most residences in the United States. Less expensive electric clocks use a simple AC motor that runs much like every other electric motor; These cheap motors keep decent time but are not as long lasting as a synchronous motor or rotor and drive magnet set up as in the old Telechron mototized clocks.

But what is an escapement? Which often prompts the question how does one make this sound less disturbing is you can either try putting some weight on the back of the clock. Another thing that you can try is oiling the overall mechiansm. A clock is something that uses the energy supply from an energy source, to makes its hands move at a consistent pace so that it can tell the variations in time spans.

Down below is a picture of the insides of an analog clock to better elaborate the procedure that we just mentioned. Hopefully, this article was helpful in answering some of the questions that you might have had about clocks and their ticking, if you have any related questions feel free to use the comment section below. Clocks have always intrigued me and the importance that they have in our lives is way beyond phenomenal.

So, on this site, I write everything about clocks, everything from answering any clock-related queries that you might have along with recommending some of my favorite clocks accordingly. The history of how we apprehend time flows through biology, astronomy and culture. Our most basic sense of time is a biological one: the movement of the sun across the sky, dividing our world into days and nights. At this level we mark time the same way as did our ancestors who first learned to walk upright, and with our whole bodies.

Is it dark or light? Is it cold or hot? And, for hunter-gatherers, early pastoralists or people who skipped breakfast: am I hungry? But as civilisations started to take shape, we moved towards a sense of time that was less subjective and more communal. The earliest timekeeping devices were essentially visual — the hourglass, the sundial and the water-clock. But when you needed to persuade large numbers of people to do something at the same time, sound was what you used.

In the military, reveille has always been a ceremonial wake-up call with a musical instrument. And the Bible tells us that the end of the world will be signalled with seven trumpets.

Time, for most pre-modern people, was outstandingly an aural experience. The day was structured by sounds: the ringing of church bells or the call to prayer. The church bell was an omnipresent part of the soundscape of everyday life. At some point this was then automated so that the clock could do the job of the man.

The word clock derives from the Latin for bell: clocca. By the industrial age — when the working day was divided according to clock-time; when time really was money — the place of those bells was supplanted or augmented by the factory whistle and the school bell. Then — with the spread of mechanical timepieces into private homes — the function of those church bells was taken over by the long-case clock in the hall, and eventually by the ticking watch on our wrist.

Jaeger-LeCoultre was in the sound business before it was in the time business. In its archive — filled with century-old precision machinery, watches mounted in display cases and shelves of historic designs and concept drawings — one glass case contains a tiny music box, of the sort where a little nubbed metal cylinder rotates and plays a tune as it lifts the teeth of a comb of fine steel tines.

And it was the first wristwatch to be able to play the Westminster chimes melody in its entirety. When you move a slider or press a button on a minute repeater, the clockwork within will activate tiny hammers to strike tiny gongs: first for the hours, then quarter-hours, then minutes.

The market for minute repeaters is estimated to be no more than or so watches a year worldwide.